Page:Six Essays on Johnson.djvu/41

Rh till he gets home to his seat in the country, to produce this wonderful deed; he’ll call up the landlord of the first inn on the road; and, after a suitable preface upon the mortality and the uncertainty of life, will tell him that he should not delay making his will; and “here, Sir,” will he say, “is my will, which I have just made, with the assistance of one of the ablest lawyers in the kingdom;” and he will read it to him (laughing all the time). He believes he has made this will; but he did not make it; you, Chambers, made it for him. I trust you have had more conscience than to make him say, “being of sound understanding;” ha, ha, ha! I hope he has left me a legacy. I’d have his will turned into verse, like a ballad.’

Something of Boswell’s genius is revealed in a passage like this. The genius of Johnson is harder to capture and define. Perhaps it might be said to consist in an unfailing instinct for the realities of life. When he utters what sounds like a commonplace, it will be found on examination to be something far different from a commonplace, something that calls attention back to the forgotten essential, which, when once it is remembered, puts an end to the idle play of theory. ‘A man is loath to be angry at himself.’ ‘Babies do not want to hear about babies.’ ‘The great end of comedy is to make an audience merry.’ ‘When a man is tired of London he is tired of life.’ ‘A cow is a very good animal in a field, but we turn her out of a garden.’ ‘No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures.’ ‘It is a sad thing for a man to lie down and die.’ These are not wit in the usual sense of that word; but if they be understood in their